Page 33 of Ringer
“Just because,” Gemma said. “Because the house is theirs, it was always theirs. They probably built it—”
“So if you build something, it automatically belongs to you?” Calliope’s voice had turned sharp, and Gemma realized she’d said the wrong thing.
“No,” Gemma said carefully. “Not always.” Calliope looked down. Her knuckles were very white on the brim of the hat. “You don’t belong to Haven, Calliope. You never belonged to them.”
Calliope said nothing for a while. “It’s just I’ve never seen so many things before,” she said, so quietly the wordstouched Gemma like a wind. She immediately felt terrible. “I always wanted, for my own. All of us wanted things. Only people could own anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Gemma said. She really was. How would she ever be able to fix Calliope? How could she even start? “It isn’t the owning that makes a person, you know. It has nothing to do with that.”
“Then what?” Calliope said. “What is it?”
Gemma couldn’t answer that either. Calliope looked down at the hat, turning it again in her hands.
“At Haven the nurses left things without meaning to. Clips to put in your hair, except we didn’t have hair, we weren’t allowed. Number forty liked pens. She liked to suck on them. Her tongue was always black with ink. Maybe that’s why she was an idiot. I found a whole package of gum, once, and Cassiopeia got a bracelet and I wanted it bad, but she hid it so them wouldn’t take it.” Calliope shook her head. “But I got even better than she did, in the end. It was because of watching. Most of the other thems never paid attention. But I always paid attention. I saw how the people talked and how they did things.”
Wind briefly stirred the curtains, and made phantom shapes: faces appeared in the cloth, rippled, and were gone.
“The nurses hid in the bathrooms to use their cellphones.” She saidcell phonesthe way someone else might saychurch: as if the words carried special power. “They weren’t supposed to, but they did anyway. I found a cell phone of my own one day. It was just sitting there. I kept it hid. I was very, very careful. When they turned up Ursa Major with Nurse Maxine’s wallet, all of us got searched. Ursa Major got hit so bad her face swole up and she had to go to the Box.”
A terrible taste soured Gemma’s mouth.
“The first day I was so happy. I hid far on the other side of the island and missed Stew Pot and all my testing, and I got in trouble from nurses afterward. But it was worth it. Sometimes the cell phone did nothing, and other times it lit and played music. Once I saw lots of numbers and I pressed all the buttons and I must have pressed at the right time and somebody spoke to me. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Hello.’ I was too scared to talk back. I liked to listen, though.” Calliope scowled. “And then the phone made music too loud and the nurses took it away from me. Nurse Maxine said she would cut my fingers off if she ever caught me stealing again. I was happy when Haven burned,” she added abruptly, and her voice sharpened. “I was happy when the roof exploded. I hoped she was inside, I hoped all her skin was burning, her and all the other nurses.”
Gemma took a deep breath, fighting the hard tug of nausea. “But think of how many people died,” she said.“And—and all those babies, the infants in Postnatal, the ones you liked to visit? Remember, you told me that?” Calliope’s face didn’t change. “They’re dead.”
Calliope shrugged. “Things die,” she said. “At Haven, things died all the time. The Pinks and the Yellows, mostly all of them died. Browns too. They got sick early and started walking into things. Forgetting where their cots were and being stupid clumsy.”
“So that’s it?” Gemma’s voice was inching into a scream, and Calliope looked up, frowning, as if the tone bothered her. But Gemma couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t calm down. “You don’t feelbad? You don’t feel sorry?”
It was like watching a shutter latched tight against a storm: all the expression went out of Calliope’s eyes. For a long time, she stood there, staring at Gemma in silence, still holding the hat she’d found in one of the closets, her long white fingers knuckle-tight on its brim.
“If it isn’t theowningthat makes humans,” Calliope said finally, and her voice was all knit together, interlaced with tension, “and it isn’t themaking, either, then maybe it’s theunmaking?”
Before Gemma could stop her, Calliope had ripped the ribbon from the crown of the hat. She tossed it on the ground and began to stomp it with a heel. Her face flattened, like a reptile’s, into an expression of cold anger.
“Stop it.” Gemma struggled to get to her feet. Calliopeswept a hand over the kitchen shelves, crashing mugs, bowls, and plates to the ground. “Calliope,stop.”
She didn’t stop. She turned and darted into the living room. With two hands, she yanked the mirror from the wall and threw it. Gemma had to duck out of the way, folding her ankle again and barely catching herself on the counter. When the mirror hit the wall, the glass slid out of the frame and shattered.
A curse,was the first thing Gemma thought. A curse of bad luck.
“There,” Calliope said. Glass crunched beneath her shoes. “Now it’s ugly. Now it’s ruined. Now no one can have it.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Gemma said, tasting blood and tears in her mouth—she’d bit down on her tongue. Calliope lunged for her and Gemma screamed. But Calliope just gripped her by the wrist, squeezing so tight Gemma could feel the individual impressions of Calliope’s nails.
“What if they never come back?” Calliope asked, so quietly Gemma nearly missed it. Terror swept down her spine, like the touch of an alien hand.
“What?” she whispered.
Calliope was careful not to look at her. “You said the people who live here will come back,” Calliope said. “But what if they don’t? What if they stay away forever?”
Dimly, over the thunder of her heartbeat, Gemma heard Pete creaking down the hall. Calliope released her quickly—but not quickly enough.
“What thehell?” Pete had changed into a pair of loose drawstring pants and a clean shirt, and there was color in his face again, although his eyes were still too bright, as if he had a fever. Gemma was shocked by how intensely relieved she was to see him.
For a second Calliope just stood there, breathing hard. Then she shoved past Gemma and hurtled out the door, letting it slam behind her.
Turn the page to continue reading Gemma’s story. Click here to read Chapter 19 of Lyra’s story.
